The Threads of Being
by MrsVincentCrabbe
Summary: COMPLETE: He worships the power she had over the lives of men. She never asks him to speak. Together, they rule the universe for all eternity. A Metaphysical, Abstract Raj/Karma Romance.
1. The Threads of Being

AN: Because of a discussion about Raj and Karma (which somehow got shortened to Raj/Karma), I had to write a metaphysical, abstract Raj/Karma fic. Here it is.

He always bowed to her when he felt the strings pull. He could sense the fabric of his life was frayed at the edges and it was up to her to weave them together in any way she wished. She could pull him into a tangle of lies and confusion that would tailspin his life. She could make him too proud of his degree and his education and weave his soul into the body of the flea. She had him in the palm of her hand like the favored plaything of a child. He always bowed to her when she pulled at the very threads of his being.

So, when she came to him at night, in his dreams, he would bow to her. She would smile with a sort of frightening grace and he would try to open his mouth to speak his high regard for her. She would hush him, telling him that no words were needed from a servant so faithful as he. He had proved himself so well in actions that words were nothing to her. She let the ephemeral, ghostly blue of her eyes speak for her. She didn't need words from him.

He trembled in her presence; her ruthless glory and all-encompassing pity. She sent men through eons of slavery for lording over others, she took pity on the enslaved and gave them a fast and breath-taking freedom as cheetahs or leopards, animals that roamed wild without constraint or fear. She took the very Lives she controlled and gifted Life to those who lived by her rule. She punished the wicked and blessed the grieved and suffering. He knew that, even if he could speak to women, he would have been speechless, breathless, awed in her presence until he existed no longer.

One night, reclining on a bed of moss by the very River of Time, watching centuries flow by like silver liquid, bumping over the jagged rocks called "Age", "War", "Drought", and "Catastrophe", and gliding over the smooth rocks of "Plenty", "Youth", "Growth", and "Peace", she asked him if he wished to stay with her forever. He didn't have to speak but kissed her cool, cerulean hand and smiled. Together, they could rule for all eternity.

_Originally posted on Livejournal 8 April 2009._


	2. Glass

AN: Apparently, there had to be more.

He awoke once to find her frozen on the edge of the River of Time, Breezes of Peace strengthing into the Gales of Turmoil. Her white hair whipping around her face. He padded quietly behind her and peered into the ripples of the water. It was clouded and dark and he swore the waves smashed into the rocks like gunshots and he understood.

So he brushed his fingers against her own slender digits. He stepped back and let her catch his eye. She stepped forward and he back, moving her away from her responsibility. Taking her away from her duty and her punishment. Her sorrow.

And she reaches a hand out to grab his but he always stays a hairbreadth away. Because she hates War. She hates the deaths she has to deal out and the guilt of men who blame her for their lives.

So he pulls her away with a gravity all his own. He takes her into the Glade of Hope in the Forest of Uncertainity. The spot where the only place to go is upward and on. He pulles her into him and today she isn't cold. Today, she is radiating the heat of a thousand guns, of hot foreign suns and young men dying before their time. But he takes the heat and shares it with her.

She feels fragile against his body, like blue glass washed up on the seashore. So he's afraid to touch her, to press her into the soft grass and sear himself into her eternity. But she grabs him and shows him how unbreakable she is. How she's survived eons of terrible sights. So, he holds onto her. He loves her. And when he thinks she's going to break, he feels himself crack with the searing heat and the flood of emotions.

She forgets she's a goddess and he forgets he's a mere mortal.

And They Just Are.

_Originally posted on Livejournal 28 August 2009_


	3. Safe Haven

Raj hadn't thought about them years. He'd selectively just assumed that this, this was all just a prolonged dream that existed outside the realm of space and time, that he was a new being moving at the pace of his own heartbeat and nothing else. He just trusted that she wouldn't let any harm come to him, that this was just his fantasy, his safe haven. He bathed in the cool waters of contentment and rose to the gentle heat of assurance. His appearance never changed and neither did hers; they existed in a steady state of giving and taking only of each other and never of time. They were happy as they were.

Raj liked to lie beside the River and watch the world spin. He could see flashes of colors and snippets of the life people lived on without him. He saw smiles and tears, smoke and clouds, sunshine and darkness. He saw an infant take its first breath and a soldier take his last. He saw an arching back and a nervous smile. He watched these strangers with an abject fascination, an almost guilty voyeuristic twinge hidden in the back of his mind. He grew golden in the sunshine and he listlessly let his fingers dip into the water. It was then that he saw it, Howard's face laughing as Penny rolled her eyes at him, an amused smirk on her lips anyway. He jumped up, following that bit of water as it bubbled down the brook. Leonard and Sheldon, sitting on the couch like any other night, smiling at each other over commercials and shared decisions. He saw Leonard and Penny kiss and kiss again, a white dress, Howard in a yarmulke and the distant sound of Mrs. Wolowitz shouting 'Mazel Tov'. He had to run now to keep up with the pace of their lives. He saw Leonard and Penny moving into a house, Sheldon smiling as he complained, Howard marrying a young girl Raj had never met. There were children and grey hair and prom and weddings. Sheldon and Missy burying their mother almost made Raj stop but he couldn't lose them now, now that he'd found their place in history. He ran faster, watching as the little rivulets broke off around rocks as children grew up and moved on, making their own little space in the world.

Raj had always assumed the River had no end and no beginning, that it just flowed on and on and would never stop. He kept running, breath hot and sharp in his chest, the sun waning and growing dim the farther along he got. First Leonard faded, content and silently from the water. Raj pounded onward, watching the lines sink deeper into Penny's skin and Howard's hair fall out more and more. Howard went next, a rickety little pervert who liked to pinch his grandson's girlfriend's cheek and talk about "the good old days." Penny went next, in a hospital bed, with Sheldon by her side, equally as old and as tired but not ready to quit yet.

The River was so much shallower here, to a point where Raj could almost see the brown mud bed beneath the clear water. He looked up, sweat pouring down his face and dripping from the ends of his hair. Ahead of him was a hut, small and unassuming, and the River ended just before the hut, drying up to nothing more than earth and stone. Raj could feel Karma inside the hut and he walked forward, unsure and yet unafraid.

"Raj," Karma said, turning to see her lover in the doorway. "You have seen things today I never intended for you to see." Raj nodded solemnly, wanting to speak up and ask her but she only nodded back, understanding.

"Sheldon's time has come, Raj," she intoned quietly. "But he will not go easily." Raj stood back, knowing that Sheldon would never go easy, knowing that Sheldon would hold onto this life with every fiber within him, knowing that Sheldon still had so many unfinished things, so many mysteries of the universe to uncover. "They missed you, Rajesh," she assured him.

Raj felt the pang of their absence for the first time. He wondered, with the passing curiosity of a child, how time worked here, but he knew he would never understand it. He missed them and their crazy lives. He'd missed seeing Leonard and Penny's wedding, missed seeing Howard's first child born, missed all of Sheldon's achievements and awards. He mourned not for his own life but for the lives he had missed, the ones he should have been there for. Karma must have sensed his discomfort, the sky outside the hut waning of its color and the clouds drooping to cover the light.

"Do you regret it, my love?" Raj looked at his darling's blue eyes, the smooth planes of his face, the frighteningly powerful slant of her eyes. She was glorious, even in her despair, and he grasped onto her wrists and tugged her closer. _No, he'd never regretted it_, he tried to say with his hands, his lips. Because she was worth this, the unanswered questions, the scary future and bleak past. They left the hut and moved back, to the place that was their home now, and he caught a glimpse of Sheldon's body being lowered into the ground with only Missy there to stand vigil. His breath caught for just a second, uncertainty leeching in and asking him if he wasn't suppose to be there to hold Missy's hand and maybe put her in the ground beside her brother someday, but Karma took his hand and he felt his fear leave him. He looked into her eyes and saw that his past, present, and future were mixed together as one and he had always been where he was meant to be: by her side.


End file.
